Pujol, Ernesto

CONSIDER the lively examples set us by the saints, who possessed the light of true perfection and religion, and you will see how little, how nearly nothing, we do. What, alas, is our life, compared with theirs? The saints and friends of Christ served the Lord in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness, in work and fatigue, in vigils and fasts, in prayers and holy meditations, in persecutions and many afflictions. How many and severe were the trials they suffered-the Apostles, martyrs, confessors, virgins, and all the rest who willed to follow in the footsteps of Christ! They hated their lives on earth that they might have life in eternity.

From 'The Imitation of Christ', Thomas Kempis (1425?)

Within the Catholic church The Imitation of Christ is a well-known devotional text ascribed to the Augustinian monk Thomas Kempis. The book condemns pride, earthly pleasures, and intellectual pursuits and extols the virtues of humility, sacrifice, and following the example of the life of Jesus Christ. In describing his latest series of work entitled Hagiography, Ernesto Pujol refers to his own upbringing in a devoutly Catholic family, and recalls his grandmother who kept several copies of the Kempis text. As a child Pujol was educated by European missionaries at a private Roman Catholic school. In 1980, a year after finishing college, he entered a monastery and spent the next four years as a cloistered monk devoted to prayer and the study of mystical writings, in particular that of St. John of the Cross and Saint Teresa of Avila-founder of the Discalced Carmelite order to which Pujol belonged. After receiving a dispensation from his vows Pujol left the monastery and moved to New York City where he devoted his efforts to the growth of his career as an artist and to AIDS activism.

Hagiography is defined as the study of the biographies of saints. In this series Pujol presents a group of idealized representations of saints and nuns as large 3 x 5' digitally printed self-portraits. Pujol credits the inspiration for this series to a group of photographs that were taken in the1890s by Sister Genevieve of the Holy Face of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, a French Carmelite nun who died at the age of 24 in 1897, and was canonized in 1926. The next phase of this project will include a series of male saints.

At first glance one might mistakenly perceive this work as a parody of the Catholic religion, but they would miss the subtlety and complexity of Pujol's intention. From a 1999 interview with Octavio Zaya regarding this series Pujol states, 'These photographs subvert gender and religious propriety, but they are also careful visual essays in which I am consciously trying to preserve a certain sense of dignity, like the captain in a sinking ship. And the church is a very big ship; and the post Cold War global capitalism is a very big sea.' He goes on to say, 'I am not interested in the kitsch of religion. If you observe these photos carefully, they are not altarpieces. There is only costume covering the human body with discipline.' Pujol's objective is not to ridicule the church, but instead to denote the decorum associated with piety. Through a well-mediated body language these portraits become part performance and part tribute as the artist looks back to his own memories of Catholic school and his experience as a monk.

Arguably the Catholic church is unique in its veneration of saints-those individuals whose acts of devotion, sacrifice, and extreme tests of faith set the standard to which other Catholics aspired. For some Catholics repressed memories of parochial school, catechism, the smell of burning incense, Latin mass, or a tattered copy of The Imitation of Christ might remind us of our Catholic obligation to emulate the examples of the saints. In the series Hagiography, Pujol treats these elements of a Catholic experience with a modicum of humor balanced with nostalgia and reverence.

Gary Hesse (c)2000

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CONSIDER the lively examples set us by the saints, who possessed the light of true perfection and religion, and you will see how little, how nearly nothing, we do. What, alas, is our life, compared with theirs? The saints and friends of Christ served the Lord in hunger and thirst, in cold and nakedness, in work and fatigue, in vigils and fasts, in prayers and holy meditations, in persecutions and many afflictions. How many and severe were the trials they suffered-the Apostles, martyrs, confessors, virgins, and all the rest who willed to follow in the footsteps of Christ! They hated their lives on earth that they might have life in eternity.

From 'The Imitation of Christ', Thomas Kempis (1425?)

Within the Catholic church The Imitation of Christ is a well-known devotional text ascribed to the Augustinian monk Thomas Kempis. The book condemns pride, earthly pleasures, and intellectual pursuits and extols the virtues of humility, sacrifice, and following the example of the life of Jesus Christ. In describing his latest series of work entitled Hagiography, Ernesto Pujol refers to his own upbringing in a devoutly Catholic family, and recalls his grandmother who kept several copies of the Kempis text. As a child Pujol was educated by European missionaries at a private Roman Catholic school. In 1980, a year after finishing college, he entered a monastery and spent the next four years as a cloistered monk devoted to prayer and the study of mystical writings, in particular that of St. John of the Cross and Saint Teresa of Avila-founder of the Discalced Carmelite order to which Pujol belonged. After receiving a dispensation from his vows Pujol left the monastery and moved to New York City where he devoted his efforts to the growth of his career as an artist and to AIDS activism.

Hagiography is defined as the study of the biographies of saints. In this series Pujol presents a group of idealized representations of saints and nuns as large 3 x 5' digitally printed self-portraits. Pujol credits the inspiration for this series to a group of photographs that were taken in the1890s by Sister Genevieve of the Holy Face of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, a French Carmelite nun who died at the age of 24 in 1897, and was canonized in 1926. The next phase of this project will include a series of male saints.

At first glance one might mistakenly perceive this work as a parody of the Catholic religion, but they would miss the subtlety and complexity of Pujol's intention. From a 1999 interview with Octavio Zaya regarding this series Pujol states, 'These photographs subvert gender and religious propriety, but they are also careful visual essays in which I am consciously trying to preserve a certain sense of dignity, like the captain in a sinking ship. And the church is a very big ship; and the post Cold War global capitalism is a very big sea.' He goes on to say, 'I am not interested in the kitsch of religion. If you observe these photos carefully, they are not altarpieces. There is only costume covering the human body with discipline.' Pujol's objective is not to ridicule the church, but instead to denote the decorum associated with piety. Through a well-mediated body language these portraits become part performance and part tribute as the artist looks back to his own memories of Catholic school and his experience as a monk.

Arguably the Catholic church is unique in its veneration of saints-those individuals whose acts of devotion, sacrifice, and extreme tests of faith set the standard to which other Catholics aspired. For some Catholics repressed memories of parochial school, catechism, the smell of burning incense, Latin mass, or a tattered copy of The Imitation of Christ might remind us of our Catholic obligation to emulate the examples of the saints. In the series Hagiography, Pujol treats these elements of a Catholic experience with a modicum of humor balanced with nostalgia and reverence.